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Tag Archives: Comfort food

I’m not sure why potato rosti is so satisfying, but it really really is!
I guess, like with roast potatoes or chips, it’s the combination of potato with a crisp outer layer and a soft inside, which is always going to be such a comforting combination.
This recipe makes a great lunch, combining the rosti with a lovely fresh apple and dill coleslaw, and a savoury, creamy walnut pate.
It’s really quick to prepare if you have a food processor with a grating attachment, but if not you can always slice the cabbage, celery and apple for the coleslaw. The potatoes and carrot do need grating though! The ground ginger in the coleslaw may seem an unusual ingredient, but do try it, it’s just a tiny bit so you don’t taste it as such but it complements the flavours of the vegetables beautifully.
We ate the rosti between the two of us, and had coleslaw and pate left for another meal, but you could serve it as a starter for 4 with the rosti cut into quarters.

Grate the potatoes first, and then tip them into a clean tea towel and wring out over the sink.
Heat the oil in a (preferably low-sided) frying pan on a medium heat. Add the potatoes, with salt and pepper, to the pan and squash out into a large round, about 5 mm thick. Cook for around 5 minutes until golden brown. Flip, and cook the other side for a further 5 minutes. While the rosti is cooking make the coleslaw. Simply combine the vegetables and apple with the oil, vinegar, dill and seasoning and mix well.
For the walnut pate, whizz all the ingredients together in a food processor or with an immersion blender until combined but still with a little texture.
Serve the rosti cut into halves or quarters, with the coleslaw and pate on the side.

This weekend Alex and I have been stripping wallpaper and sanding walls, it’s hard work, and so dusty!
So for lunch today we needed something easy and nutritious, with minimal time spent in the kitchen.
We’d picked up some spiralised vegetables cheap at the supermarket the other day, so we combined them with gluten free spaghetti, toasted cashew nuts, tarragon, and a cheaty sauce made from vegan cream cheese (we used violife brand).
It was gorgeous, comforting while still giving us a good amount of vegetables, and some protein from the cashew nuts. The tarragon really makes it though!
It’s a combination of flavours we’ll be making again, possibly with the vegetables diced rather than spiralised, the textures will work just as well.

In a dry saucepan on a medium heat cook the cashews, stirring often until starting to brown, around 3 minutes. Tip into a dish to cool.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil (use the cashew pan for ease), and cook the spaghetti according to the packet instructions. Steam the courgette and butternut squash (I use the microwave), 2 – 3 minutes each if spiralised, a little more if diced.
Drain the pasta and return it to the pan on a low heat. Add the vegan cream cheese, tarragon and soy milk. Stir until the cream cheese has melted into a sauce.
Mix in the nutritional yeast and salt and pepper to taste.
Toss through the courgette, butternut and cashews.

I didn’t really feel like I should be calling this a moussaka, with it being vegan, but the flavours definitely have a nod to the Greek classic!
I guess with there being a meat free base, and a dairy and egg free topping, it should maybe be called moussaka, veganbungalow style… The first time I made moussaka, many moons ago, it was with a white sauce based topping, but as I researched more recipes over the years I changed to the type more like a savoury custard. So that’s what I’ve recreated here. Soy yoghurt and silken tofu blended with tapioca and flavourings sets up nicely and add a lovely richness.
Also, although aubergine (eggplant) are more well known in a moussaka, Alex would grumble furiously if I used them, so here I’ve gone for courgettes (zucchini). I actually prefer them!
The only oil in the recipe is drizzled on top to brown the courgettes, making it super healthy. To be honest though, that was mainly laziness, I didn’t want to wash up a frying pan…

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees c.
Put all of the ingredients for the lentil layer, apart from the salt and pepper, in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for around 25 minutes, uncovered, until the red lentils have disappeared into the sauce and the green lentils are tender.
Season to taste.
While the lentils are cooking, steam the potatoes and courgettes. The potatoes need to be tender, and the courgette slices starting to go bendy. Cook them separately, I used the microwave.
Whizz together the ingredients for the savoury custard in a food processor until smooth.
Slice the potatoes into 5 mm slices and place them in a layer in the bottom of an ovenproof casserole dish. I use a 20 cm round one (I also used this to cook the lentils, and then transferred them to a bowl for the layering).
Add the lentils next, and then a good thick layer of courgettes, use about 2/3 of them.
Next the savoury custard, and then arrange the last 1/3 of the courgettes prettily on top.
Drizzle with the oil. Bake for 20 minutes, and then flash under the grill for a few minutes to brown the top if you like.

We’re finding ourselves having less and less time for cooking new things recently, we’re eating the usual delicious salads for work lunches and that sort of thing, but nothing really new enough to blog about on the whole!
But this, although we can hardly believe it, is our 300th post for veganbungalow!
So it feels like the right time to make something special.
In our experiments with the flour mix we use for our pittas, we’ve discovered (oh joy of joys!), that it makes a great gluten free pasta!
It has a wonderful texture, and can be used for tagliatelle, tortellini, ravioli and all those sorts of things.
For this recipe we’ve kept it simple, just a basic dough with a little beetroot powder added for a fun colour, and a super quick and delicious pea and basil pesto.
It’s definitely a dish worthy of our veganbungalow milestone!

To make the pasta, mix together the dry ingredients with a balloon whisk and slowly add the water, mixing with your hand until it forms a dough. It should be fairly soft and pliable.
Pop the dough in a plastic bag, and rest it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. It will be hard to roll if you don’t.
While the dough is resting, make the pesto.
Simply whizz all of the ingredients together in a mini processor, or use a pestle and mortar. It should not be completely smooth you want a bit of texture.
Dust your board with a little rice flour and roll the dough out to around 1 mm thick. Cut into 10 mm strips.
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and carefully drop the pasta in. Bring back to the boil and cook the pasta for 2 minutes and then drain. The pasta will swell up a little as it cooks
Serve the papardelle with the pesto plopped prettily on top.

Oh these are good! Potato and citrus isn’t a combination that I tend to think of instinctively, but I guess that may be my northern European palate…
The British way with potatoes tends more towards pairing them with mint or parsley, that sort of thing. Or frying them or mashing them of course!
But slowly baked in a lemony, herby broth the potatoes soften but hold their shape and go a little sticky around the edges. Yum!
They’re great warm as part of a main meal, or cold in a salad too.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees c.
Put the potatoes in a roasting dish that holds them comfortably without being crowded.
Whisk together the lemon juice, oil, hot water, rice flour, celery seed and dried herbs and seasoning.
Pour the mixture over the potatoes. Cover with foil. Bake for 45 minutes stirring half way through.
Remove the foil and bake uncovered for 30 minutes.
The potatoes should be beautifully tender and a little sticky. Scatter the parsley on top just before serving.

I guess lentil soup tends to be seen of as more of an autumnal type of a meal, but I’m not one to shun a soup at any time of year! And red peppers are summery, no?
Anyway, it was delicious, filling but not too heavy and it’s so very easy to make.
There’s nothing like making a big pot of homemade soup so you have something wholesome waiting after a long day at work!

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees c.
This is so easy it’s barely a recipe…
Put all of the ingredients bar the salt and pepper and nutritional yeast in a large casserole dish. Cover, and cook in the oven for 45 minutes, stirring half way through. Whizz it up a little using an immersion blender if you like, but it’s not really necessary.
Season to taste, and stir through the nutritional yeast just before serving.

I think both Alex and I are almost back to cooking in normal quantities after our catering adventures over the last few weeks!
But first, we have leftover mustard potato salad (I panicked and peeled far too many potatoes…). It’s delicious though, with a lovely mustardy tangy dressing, but eating the same thing too many times in a row can of course get pretty monotonous!
So as well as eating it as is, we’ve been trying to use it in other ways too.
Alex used some to make a frittata, with the ‘egg’ base being made from Follow Your Heart’s VeganEgg, which was very successful! The texture is very much like eggs, although you do need to add plenty of flavour.
I on the other hand, made soup. Of course!
It’s super simple, just using the potato salad as a base with stock, spinach and peas added. It’s a nice soothing flavour, and sufficiently different from the original recipe to keep things interesting. It’s definitely worth making more potato salad than you need so you can have the soup too!

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil.
Add the peeled and sliced potatoes, bring back to the boil, and then cover and turn the heat down. Simmer for 5 – 7 minutes until just tender. It’s important not to overcook the potatoes, they will carry on softening a little when they’re in the dressing.
While the potatoes are cooking, make the dressing.
Heat the oil in a small saucepan and then add the rice flour to make a roux. Mix well until it’s all combined, and then cook stirring constantly for a couple of minutes.
Slowly add the water, beating after each addition to ensure the dressing is smooth.
Stir in the vinegar, salt, pepper, mustards and sugar and cook stirring often until the vinegar flavour has mellowed a bit. It should be quite sharp though.
Add the dressing to the potatoes and leave to cool.
Stir through the herbs before serving.

To make the soup, simply put the potato salad in a saucepan and add the stock. Simmer for about 5 minutes and then blend (I used an immersion blender).
Pop the soup back on the heat and add the spinach. Cook gently until it has defrosted. Next add the peas and cook for a further 2 minutes or so until everything is hot.
Serve topped with the chives.

I bought some risotto rice from Lidl the other day, as usual without a clear idea of what to do with it…

I did think about trying something unusual, but really, a vegetable risotto is such a gorgeous thing that I decided to keep it simple!

I’ve used the absolute minimum of oil here with just one tablespoon, I don’t think you can get away with any less or there just isn’t enough to coat the rice before the liquids go in. Also I thought I’d give it a go without any onion or shallot, instead using just carrot and celery as the base, it worked very well seeming to keep a nicely clean vegetable flavour.

I removed half of the risotto before adding in the spinach and peas, so I can make something else with it another day (arancini maybe…), but the vegetable quantities given below are for the full 4 servings.

Like the parched peas that I posted the recipe for here, butter pie is a very very
Lancashire dish. My grandad was a baker so I grew up with them,
but I do understand why it seems a strange idea!
It’s not as odd as it sounds though, being a potato and onion pie, flavoured with
butter.
When Alex and I started eating vegan it was one of the first things on our list to
rework, it’s taken us a while to get a recipe we’re happy with though!
Of course there’s no butter in our version, but to recreate the richness (after
much thought!) we’ve come up with this lovely recipe in which the
potatoes are cooked using the confit method, but at a slightly higher temperature.
The potatoes are submerged in oil with aromatics and then baked, the resulting
texture is, well, buttery!
The onions though, must be boiled….
We made tiny versions of these as canapes recently, and they went down an
absolute storm!

I’m a little short of fresh vegetables at the moment, but had a tin of artichokes in the cupboard which I thought would make a lovely basis for work lunch tomorrow. I fancied making something a little more complex than a salad this time though, and lasagne fitted the bill perfectly.

It’s always fun to experiment with sauces, and this one with tarragon and lemon zest came out beautifully! I’m surprised it made it to lasagne to be honest, I could have eaten it all with a spoon…

The combination of vegetables and beans with oregano and fennel seed works so well with the sauce, it’s turned out to be a sophisticated version of the veggie lasagne with unusual but subtle flavours.